1 John

I've decided to study 1 John for a while. It's a very short book - all of 5 chapters but it is so full of beauty I've decided to rest there for a bit. Yesterday, in 1 John 2 there is a phrase that was used twice that jumped out at me - "because you have known him who is from the beginning" and it thumped me a bit in the heart again. John didn't write as someone who heard stories he just needed to share, he was THERE. Jesus washed his feet. He ate with Christ, traveled with Christ, was there when Peter answered him "You are the Messiah. The Son of the Living God" and all that means. He was there on the mountain when Jesus was transfigured and Moses and Elijah "who were talking with him." He isn't speaking as some bystander. He knows what happened and risked a lot to write it down. He doesn't use that phrase to describe himself, though. It is for the fathers. I have to think about them, too. How did they recognize Christ for who He is and not "miss" that? How is it that so many people have missed it and do miss it? Would I know Christ for who He is if He stood before me in the flesh?

There is a Dead Sea Scroll-type tablet that is in the process of being translated and studied. The article in the New York Times over the weekend states that it might be a table to shake Chrisitanity's theology up a bit. It seems to be the latest round in satan's war to draw more people away from the Living God. What a sad and sorry goal he has and with what futility he goes about reaching it. The article stated that the scholars who are studying it have to guess at a few words - they are so faded as to be illegible. Also, it seems to speak of a messiah dying and rising in three days was a general practice of a certain sect of Jews at the time. How will they prove it was a "practice?" Do they have the proof that these messiahs actually did rise after three days? Were they completely dead or were they just in a coma of some sort? How will they try to disparage the fact that Jesus doesn't just meet that one prophecy but meets something like 108 other prophecies foretelling his coming in the Bible? How do they account for those who in Acts 1 watched him ascend into heaven? Mushrooms, I'm sure... I'm sorry for the sarcasm but it frustrates me that so many people spend so much of their lives here trying to disprove who Jesus "was" instead of getting to know who He is. I ache to see the fear, the anger, the stubborness that so many people maintain in their crying out that Jesus was not the Christ, that He is not the Son of God. Some even taking it further - that there is no God. I often wonder how people can sustain that argument. When I doubt my faith (and I do sometimes), I rarely have to think further than the apostles who were witnesses of Christ's work here on earth and then martyred after He had ascended and they had spent years teaching about Him. Who would die for a lie? I mean - I can't imagine being willing to die for anything or anyone beyond my children but these men... How about Paul? I mean - Paul was the Bill Gates of his time. Rich, successful, respected. It would be like Bill Gates having spent his career designing and creating a better operating system and software and waking up one day to say computers are bad, shouldn't exist, walking away from his fortune to tell anyone and everyone that they should never touch another computer... An opposite analogy, I know, but I hope you see my point.

So... 1 John. Sorry - I get a bit worked up. Hence my needing to "rest" for a while in a beautiful book, I think. We'll see what other rabbit trails this book takes me down...